A man passed away last week. He was a man whom I, like thousands
of others, had never met, but felt I knew as intimately as my best
friends, as I felt he knew me.

Belle and Sebastian “Dear Catastrophe
Waitress” Rough Trade

In his diary for the liner notes of its new album, “Dear
Catastrophe Waitress,” Belle and Sebastian front man Stuart
Murdoch rather awkwardly uses the word “indie” to
describe the feeling of his native Glasgow in the summer.

It’s hard to believe, but summer is nearly upon us. In
fact, this column will be my last for our beloved dB magazine for
quite some time.

Many people don’t notice it in their day-to-day affairs,
but cycling has become a major factor in the music world. And I
don’t mean cycling in the
overcoming-cancer-to-take-home-the-yellow-jersey-all-the-while-tugging-at-the-heartstrings-of-a-nation
sense of the word.

This June, Los Angeles’ second incarnation of the All
Tomorrow’s Parties festival opens at Royce Hall. Despite not
taking place exclusively ““ or even primarily ““ on
campus, this year’s festival is shaping up to be at least
nearly on par with the past year’s, easily UCLA’s best
arts event of 2002.

Coachella, taking place in scenic Indio and featuring scores of
bands on four stages, was this spring’s biggest music
festival in Southern California. Naturally, dB was there to give
you the best coverage of the event.

Popular music is, by its very nature, antagonistic. Artists
creating rock and hip-hop are constantly trying to tear down old,
out-dated paradigms of a generation, or perhaps of a few weeks
earlier, and to replace it with something new and fresh.

As the ’90s drew to a close, the homogenization of rock
grew ever more pronounced and a series of bands in New York began
playing in a style that was touted as a return to
“real” rock ‘n’ roll, a style steeped in
the garage aesthetics of punk and of the psychedelic movement.

Few bands in pop music history have undergone as profound a
metamorphosis as Weilheim, Germany’s The Notwist. What began
as nothing more than one more German hard core punk band has become
one of the most successful acts to blend electronic music with pop
songwriting.

Hey, remember “Footloose,” that classic ’80s
flick in which city-boy Kevin Bacon moves to a small town where a
local minister had banned rock ‘n’ roll and dancing?